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She’s done something to her skin. The pristine blue Carol used to admire has faded to a burnished human bronze. Instead of Kree armour she wears nondescript jeans and a black leather jacket, and her hair, freed from its war braids, sits in a messy bunch at the nape of her neck. Everything about her is different now. She’s a woman on the street, a stranger in a strange land, a passing encounter on the streets of a city too ravaged by the ghosts of those it’s lost to care anymore about those it hasn’t. She’s nothing but a memory.
Carol recognises her anyway. Knows her the instant their eyes meet. But by then it’s far too late – a sight line is the only advantage Minn-Erva has ever needed.
The dart barely hurts as it pierces her neck. There’s a soft, warm, numbing feeling that drips down from the needle to the tips of her toes, and then the world fades, and Carol falls.
–
She wakes in a cell. No, not a cell – a storage cupboard. There are shelves on the walls stacked with dusty old boxes, and daylight filters weakly through the papered-over window slit on the wall above.
She’s in an ordinary office chair. Her hands are bound with thick leather straps. Laughably easy to break out of, except that when she tries, Carol finds the muscles in her arms won’t engage. She can feel them, she can move them, but they’re weak and limp and empty of the strength that she knows herself by.
‘What have you done to me?’ she asks the room.
Footsteps, and Minn-Erva enters her field of view from the side. ‘I gave you a little something for the nerves,’ she says. ‘A relaxant. Very powerful. You have no idea how much trouble I had to get it for you.’ She stops right in front of Carol, close enough to cast a shadow, and her skin tone may have changed but the coldness of her smile is exactly the same. ‘I knew you’d come back to this planet one day, Vers. You can’t help yourself, can you? Thanos snaps his fingers and here you are, just like magic.’
‘I didn’t come for Thanos,’ says Carol. She’s testing her bonds, trying to test them, but her body won’t cooperate. ‘Fury called me.’
‘Fury? The human? He’s dead. Half this wretched planet’s dead, and nothing of value was lost.’ Minn-Erva curls her lip. ‘If I never see another human as long as I live, I’ll be happy. You’re my ticket home. The Supreme Intelligence will be very surprised to see us both after all this time away.’
Her voice cracks, and there’s a manic gleam in her eyes that Carol doesn’t remember seeing even once in their years on Hala together. All these years. Has she been here since the fight with Yon-Rogg? Stranded on planet C-53, blending in with the human population and plotting her revenge? That would mean…
‘The Supreme Intelligence doesn’t want you back,’ Carol guesses, and knows she’s hit her mark when that mania burns even brighter. ‘You failed your mission. You’re no use to the Kree. They know you survived the crash, but they don’t care enough to send someone to retrieve you.’
Minn-Erva bares her teeth. ‘The Supreme Intelligence knows I can take care of myself. It’s testing me. Once the Kree learn I have you, our ships will be here in force.’
‘Yeah, I wouldn’t summon them just yet,’ says Carol. ‘I’m planning on breaking out, and it’d be pretty embarrassing if they showed up in force and found you empty-handed.’
She sees the blow coming, but there’s nothing she can do to block it. Carol’s head snaps to the side as the back of Minn-Erva’s hand hits her cheek, and as she shakes off the ringing pain, Minn-Erva pulls back face-to-face by the hair and straddles her in the office chair.
Straddles her. That slap must have knocked Carol silly. She blinks to clear her head, but Minn-Erva’s warm weight doesn’t leave her lap and the hand in her hair doesn’t relinquish its vice grip.
‘You,’ Minn-Erva says in a dangerous hiss, ‘are not going anywhere. I’ll pin you down with my own body if I have to. I’ve dreamed of this too long to let you go now.’
Carol’s heartbeat is starting to speed up, which she takes as a sign that the relaxant is wearing off. Minn-Erva is blood-hot and heavy in her lap, half-crazed eyes like burning coals in the beautiful faux-human war mask that is her current face. ‘Let’s go back a bit,’ Carol says, to buy time for her mind to shake off its daze and kick into gear. ‘For the last thirty years you’ve been hanging around the site of our last battle, thinking of me? That’s sweet, Minn-Erva, but I really don’t–’
‘You betrayed the Kree,’ Minn-Erva says. ‘You betrayed the common good and handed the filthy Skrulls a victory at our expense. You left me here to die on this shithole planet, you turned your back on the people who gave you everything and I will never, ever forgive you for it. I hate you.’
‘Well, that’s nothing new,’ says Carol fairly. ‘You said it yourself – you never even liked me.’
With a sound like a snarl, Minn-Erva digs her free hand hard into Carol’s shoulder and kisses her. Their mouths meld and their teeth clash and Carol tastes blood.
‘I hate you,’ Minn-Erva repeats against her lips. ‘You’re not going anywhere – you’re never leaving again. You’re going to give me everything.’
–
Escape, in the end, costs Carol a livid black eye and a large amount of property damage to the already-devastated borough of Manhattan. It also costs time – which, as the man called Steve Rogers reminds her curtly when the Avengers show up to take her back to their stronghold, is something they don’t have much of in their battle to reclaim their planet from its post-Thanos silence.
Time that Carol could have spent doing something constructive. She didn’t come here to fight old wars or reopen old wounds, and she also didn’t come for the pang of emotion that feels strangely like regret as she leaves Minn-Erva’s unconscious body in the rubble.
But her heart’s still beating faster than normal, as if to make up for the time she lost. She can still taste the iron tang of Minn-Erva’s blood in her mouth, mixed with the dust of the storage cupboard.
Escape costs her things she never realised she had to give. Things it never crossed her mind that her former ally would want to take. Things that will stick in her memory long after the taste of blood washes away and the bruises and scratch marks fade from her most tender skin.
Whether or not Minn-Erva called them, the Kree ships never do arrive.